Author: claredragonfly

Edie couldn’t believe how fast the semester was drawing to an end. They would be having exams next week! It didn’t seem like enough time. Of course, for some of her classes, the end couldn’t come quickly enough—she was really looking forward to getting the student-written plays in her theater class over and done with, and while she liked her French class well enough, she was really looking forward to the French classes she’d signed up for in the fall semester, which would be more challenging and immersive.

She wished her magic class wasn’t coming to an end quite so soon, though. True, next semester she’d be taking even better magic classes, but she felt like Ginny’s class hadn’t even scratched the surface. Part of that had to do with missing a class, of course, but she thought it was also just because there wasn’t enough time to fit in all the interesting things in one semester.

By the end of class, Corrie felt that she had made some progress. She could walk while in trance without breaking the trance immediately—she just had to do it very slowly, and she couldn’t pay much attention to her surroundings while she was doing it. But she was pretty sure that if she kept practicing, she would be able to be in trance while actually doing things (and not tripping) at the same time.

Professor Strega told them all that they were making good progress, and then asked to speak to Corrie, Dawn, and Roe after class. Corrie looked at both Dawn and Roe, confused, but neither of them seemed to know why they had been asked to stay late. Had the professor heard them talking about Roe wanting to reschedule her appointment?

Corrie only had a little while between her classes, but she and Edie went over what she’d heard about Jo. Edie was surprised to hear that anyone would want to leave campus, but realized it made sense after they discussed it. To them, campus had always been a dangerous place—it had been on their second night there that the entire hall had been awakened by Roe’s scream and everyone had discovered that Annie was missing (though the two things turned out to be unrelated). It had only gotten worse when most of them had forgotten about Annie, and Dawn had needed to rely on her newly-discovered Sight to remind everyone about her. Come to think of it, it had also been on their second day on campus that Corrie had discovered that her stalker ex-boyfriend, Paul, had followed her to college.

Corrie worked on some homework until it was almost time for class, then realized she actually was hungry. She had just enough time to stop at the coffee cart and get a bagel, cream cheese, and latte before she had to be at her Intro to Lit class.

She hurried in to the class at the last minute and sat down beside Edie as she always did. She opened her cream cheese and started to slather it onto the bagel, so it took her a minute to notice that the class was really quiet. That could have been because it was time for class to start, but Professor Moran didn’t come in for a few more seconds, and when she did, the class went entirely silent.

Corrie looked at Dawn, surprised by her statement. “You think they know more than they’re saying?”

“Who?” asked Edie. “The administration?”

“Yeah, whoever sent the email.” Dawn pointed to it. “The Office of Communications. Or the administration as a whole, probably. These people are just the ones who send emails. Maybe it’s even the guards who are hiding something.”

“Or the magic professors,” Corrie said. “But what do you think they’re hiding?”

Corrie felt refreshed as she left the bathroom after her shower, toweling her hair dry. Now that it was a few inches long, she’d thought about buying some styling gel to see what kind of interesting things she could do with it, but at least she could make it stick up if she managed to dry it correctly—it was just thick enough to stay up if it dried that way.

Or maybe she would just cut it all off again, now that summer was coming. It would be nice to feel a breeze around her scalp when it wasn’t the middle of winter.

“Well, he shouldn’t have gotten mad at you for that,” Corrie said, incensed on her friend’s behalf. She felt her hands balling into fists. Unfortunately, not only was Link not there, but hitting him wouldn’t do anything anyway. “Just because he’s—“

Roe held up her hand, nodding. “He apologized for that the next morning. He said he just overreacted because his ego was hurt.” She smiled faintly. “He says I can have all the time I need to decide my answer, but he really wants me to say yes. Of course, we might not be able to see each other again at all after he graduates, because the king could decide to keep him at home and that’s that.”